It started with Blondie, and ended up as a Zoo with a crew!

Tag Archives: baby

Valentine’s Day really isn’t my favorite holiday, but I’ve said that before. It just never lives up to those movie-made expectations. I’m always left feeling sort-of bah-humbug. But this year I didn’t have a bad Valentine’s Day…

I didn’t sit around and write 65 cards for my kids to pass out. I sort of hate that tradition because I know where those cards end up. I also didn’t spend 19 hours perfecting the most amazing Pinterest cupcakes ever. Because I also know exactly where those cupcakes wind up. Instead the ZooCrew requested “Fruit Rollup Valentine’s”… AHHHH! The best of both worlds! A cool valentine + a snack for the party rolled into one! I’m loving the Type B personality that has taken over my life. Simple AND impressive: that’s how I roll! (OK, that’s how I’m learning to roll. Better?)

My first job was at Six Flags Astroworld in Houston. I loved it. I worked in the games division. I mastered the basketball shot and the Wacky wire and won myself hundreds of stuffed animals from the crane machine, but my favorite thing to do was ride the Texas Cyclone. It was the world’s largest wooden roller coaster. I loved the sound the cars made as they struggled up the hills. It made you feel like you were never gonna make it to the top. I’d imagine the Little Engine That Could, chanting “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can,” and just when it seemed like we couldn’t go up even one more inch, BAM, we eased over the crest and went flying down. I loved the butterflies in my belly as we hit the bottom and started climbing again.

Yesterday my son went under the knife. Again. As I sat there in the waiting room, I couldn’t help but go back in time. It was almost exactly 16 years ago the first time we did this.

February had brought me a bouncing baby boy a few weeks early, but by March he had a collection of prescriptions. Acid reflux was the first diagnosis. Then there was the asthma and the breathing treatments and the questions of other possible problems, but it was the vomiting I was most worried about.Read the rest of this entry →

So my Dyl PIckles should be a Bionic Boy by now. I swear that kid has his own dedicated medical team. Ok, he doesn’t have that, but maybe he should have his own Dr. House on standby to figure out all the mysteries that surround this kid, and by mysteries, I mean accidental injuries mixed in with a few surgical procedures.

I remember when I brought him home. I thought he was absolutely perfect. He’d been a few weeks early, but I was glad to be done with bed-rest and on to loving my little man. There was only one problem. He kept throwing up. By the time he was 8 weeks old, he could vomit 6 feet across the room. Blondie was the cutest little 4-year-old big sister, and she loved to tote him around. One day he decided to unleash his projectile puke right on her new shirt, and she straight-up dropped him on the floor. She came running to me saying “mommy, my shirt!” I went running for the baby and she stood there dumb founded because I picked him up before I helped her!

It’s been a long nine months. From the moment Blondie moved home, there was so much to do. From finding new places to sing to moving into a new house, it’s been milestone after milestone, but this week, we’re going to hit the biggest milestone of all! I knew the moment Blondie was pregnant that it was going to be a girl! We’ve got too many boys in this house, we needed to PINK up the world around here! And SPARKLES! WE NEED SPARKLES!! A lot of people were betting on a boy, but I just knew it was going to be sugar and spice and everything nice. When the ultrasound confirmed my suspicions, Blondie and her Beau picked out a name- a very special name! Blondie and her Beau met on Broadway. The moment he heard her voice, he knew he just had to get to know her! I love that about him! A few days later they were paired together to sing and it was LOVE AT FIRST SONG! And I was there, I was standing right there! I saw my daughter give her heart away… but that’s a whole other story. Read the rest of this entry →

I had a feeling my baby shower wouldn’t go the way we had planned. Blondie has all sorts of family all over the place, and everyone wanted to celebrate the arrival of our new bundle of joy. So, there was a shower planned in November. I knew that meant our shower had to be in January, because nobody has the money to do extra things around here in December.

I hoped against hope we could have our shower January 10th. The baby wasn’t due until the 27th. I worked and worked to get ready. In fact, one day I was blessed with the greatest surprise.

To back up a little, since adopting 4 extra kids, our house has been stuck in a perpetual state of remodeling. It’s full of projects that aren’t quite done. Some days I get really depressed about that, but we only have enough money to do things a little at a time, so I have to deal with it. As the day of the baby shower approached, I started stressing over the many things that aren’t finished around here. Then all of the sudden a few days ago Memaw showed up! Read the rest of this entry →

The other day was my birthday…. and I’ll tell you, I’m officially 38 years old! I hear a lady doesn’t tell her age, but I’m proud to be this old. When I turn 40, there will be no black balloons, no tombstones, no sad faces… Sure, I’d love to go back to the 15 year old figure I once sported that lacked gray hair or fine lines, but where’s the character in that? I earned every single one of these gray hairs, including the three I plucked out last week.

Getting older doesn’t bother me, but another year without my birthday buddy, that makes me sad. This year, instead of the flood of tears, I tried to hear his jokes in everything I said or did. It kind of helped. OK, there were still some tears. I believe some people touch our lives so deeply and there is no real recovery from that loss. The hole never heals, you just learn to function with a gaping wound in your heart. My grandfather was that man.

Funny how a picture can keep a story alive! Yesterday when I was finishing up the blog that was supposed to be a music memory but ended up a bad Monday tangent, I threw a few old pictures into a little collage and BAM! The funniest story came back to me. If my life were a newspaper, the heading that day would have been “Two Year Old Steals Harley, Mother Chases Him Naked”!!

You’re gone.I still can’t believeyou ended it that way.You warned me,But I foolishly thought I could save youfrom the darknessthat became your fate. I saw your smileAgain, today.The same blue eyes,Blond hairSun kissed freckles.But I prayedHis heartdoes not carryThose same burdens of painthat took you away.He looked at me,And I rememberedThe last time I saw you smile,The last time I smiled back…

It’s not really my normal style of poetry. I like perfectly paired little verses with rhyme schemes and matching syncopation. But last week, I was working at the junior high (which isn’t my normal beat) and as I stood in the gym taking roll, I found myself face to face with the little brother of a boy I will never forget. I couldn’t choke back the words, I had to type them into my phone while I sat there thinking about him. I had seen him at school assemblies and field days many times, but the first time I really met Justin he was in junior high, patiently waiting for his Tiger spirit hoodie, and I was the PTO president delivering it to him, two weeks after everyone else already had theirs. A little mix-up on my part had caused the delay, so I fully expected to deal with an irritated pre-teen, but instead I got a boy full of smiles, thrilled to meet me after school, not a single complaint. I liked him instantly.